Hello all,

Does anyone have any ideas on how today's news of Todd McFarlane declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy may effect the resolution of the issues surrounding Miracleman? I was recently told that the issue had been very close to being resolved between Todd and Neil, and wonder if this may scuttle things.

Jeff

AHHHHHHHH..... NO MORE COOL TOYS.....

(and i lost my McFarlane Kaneda and Armitage III figures... and my Manga Spawn and Manga Violator)

Seriously, i don't know anything about this, and i'll read up more on this, and i really want Miracleman... but i also want high detail toys

From what I understand, Miracleman was always and forevermore a creator-owned property and Todd McFarlane never had any right to it in the first place. When McFarlane bought Eclipse, he acquired the film for the trade paperbacks, but the actual legal right to publish it is divided up among Neil Gaiman (who inherited Alan Moore's share), Alan Davis, and Garry Leach. I believe there was some kind of court decision to this effect as well, but I don't know when or of what nature.

I really like the comic books and would love to read them again (I sold my copies years ago and regret it now), and I hear through the grapevine that Marvel really is, cross-their-corporate-heart, planning to republish them sometime in the near (within a year) future.

Where did you hear about this bankruptcy thing? Much as I dislike Mr. McFarlane's business practices, I don't wish bankruptcy on him. Can you post a link?

Hello,

Your understanding of Miracleman is much the same as mine. I would add that I have also heard that there was apparently some sort of deal where McFarlane would let go of all claims on Miracleman in exchange for some reduction in the amount that he owes Gaiman for Angela and mideval Spawn. (Which is what makes me wonder if the bankruptcy may be a wrench in the plans.

I also heard that Marvel will be publishing the new title (new stories by Gaiman) however I also heard that the old stories will come out via a different publisher, Atomika. (Possibly with redrawn art.) Here is the McFarlane story from Yahoo!:

'Spawn' Publisher in Bankruptcy Court

Sat Dec 18, 8:54 AM ET

PHOENIX - A $15 million jury award against "Spawn" creator Todd McFarlane has pushed his comic-book business into bankruptcy court.

Todd McFarlane Productions Inc. of suburban Tempe filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

A jury in St. Louis awarded former NHL player Tony Twist $15 million after concluding that McFarlane and his company profited by using Twist's name without permission and that Twist's publicity rights were infringed.

McFarlane gave the name Antonio "Tony Twist" Twistelli to a New York mob boss character in his "Spawn" comic books in the early 1990s.

The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) in January rejected without comment an appeal by McFarlane arguing that his work was free speech.

Last year, he said his McFarlane Cos., then an umbrella of seven businesses, had annual sales exceeding $50 million.

The bankruptcy filing allows McFarlane's company to continue to operate and reorganize its finances while freeing it from the threat of creditors' lawsuits.

In 1999, McFarlane paid $3 million for Mark McGwire's 70th home-run baseball. He also paid $450,000 last year for Barry Bonds' record 73rd home-run ball and owns Sammy Sosa's 66th home-run ball.

Aha. I don't think I had heard anyone say that Neil would trade the rights to Angela and Medieval Spawn (which actually exist) for Eclipse's rights to Miracleman (which don't). I think Neil won outright and now has the rights to his Spawn stories and the printing film, and a large chunk of the rights to Miracleman. If Mr. McFarlane has a problem with the new printings, perhaps he'll engage in more litigation. That always seems to go well for him.

Thanks for posting the article, btw.

I don't think it was meant as a one for one swap. I think it was more of a situation where we know that Todd owes money to Neil, and supposedly Neil would take a little less money in exchange for Todd relinquishing all claim to Miracleman. (The thought being that in the end he would end up losing anyways.)

quote:

---

Originally posted by Screwtape:
Where did you hear about this bankruptcy thing? Much as I dislike Mr. McFarlane's business practices, I don't wish bankruptcy on him. Can you post a link?

---

Yea, same here, for the aforementioned reason that his company puts out great toys, many based on classic anime. High quality, high detail, and very durable-- i hammered two of mine into a block of clay for an art project and after washing them up they were pretty fine-- paint didn't even fade.

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff891:
I also heard that Marvel will be publishing the new title (new stories by Gaiman) however I also heard that the old stories will come out via a different publisher, Atomika. (Possibly with redrawn art.) Here is the McFarlane story from Yahoo!:

---

Where did you hear this? It somehow doesn't sound right - as far as I know it's the plan that Marvel publish both the old Miracleman stories and the new conclusion. Doesn't make sense to take it to two publishers - it's really ONE story.

And the bankruptcy most likely wont affect anything. Apparently Gaiman and his lawyers discovered months ago that Todd didn't really own any substantial rights to Miracleman in the first place - he just THOUGHT that he did, or claimed that he did.

And the Angela/Miracleman trade was something that was planned in the late 80's, but Todd got cold feet, and the deal was never finalized. Fortunately he DID send Gaiman the original Miracleman films before he abandoned the idea.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Screwtape:
From what I understand, Miracleman was always and forevermore a creator-owned property and Todd McFarlane never had any right to it in the first place. When McFarlane bought Eclipse, he acquired the film for the trade paperbacks, but the actual legal right to publish it is divided up among Neil Gaiman (who inherited Alan Moore's share), Alan Davis, and Garry Leach. I believe there was some kind of court decision to this effect as well, but I don't know when or of what nature.

---

THere hasn't been a court decision - but there was the court case about the Angela/Medieval Spawn rights, where the Miracleman rights were marginally involved because of the old MIracleman/Angela swap, or almost-swap or whatever (it's VERY complicated). Anyway, during the court case Todd HAD to send Gaiman's lawyers his Miracleman-related paperwork, and apparently they discovered that he never could have owned the character in the first place. He may partly own the name Miracleman, but that doesn't really matter - the series was originally called Marvelman until Marvel Comics forced them to change the name in the US. But with Marvel Comics as a future publisher they can simply change the name back.

So now they've decided that they'll simply go ahead and publish Miracleman, probably with the name changed back to the original Marvelman. Todd can chose to sue of course, but he'll most likely lose. . . again.

The reason why I wondered if the bankruptcy would come into play is because Todd owes money to Neil as a result of the Spawn decision. Since the bankruptcy puts creditor claims on hold, in theory, I think that would mean that any deal that would have been made where Todd had given up on Miracleman could also be put on hold if Todd wanted. (But I am not a bankruptcy lawyer so this may be incorrect.)

I had been told about the plans to reprint Miracleman by Atomika by the publisher last month at the National Comic Show in NYC. He also said that the plan called for Garry Leach to redo the art for many of the issues to accomodate more of the detail from the Alan Moore scripts. (And to also help with the flow problems that came with Eclipse reprinting the original Warrior stories.) Garry Leach is also a co-owner of Atomika. But the Atomika publisher did say Marvel would release the new storyline.

The interesting thing is that I posted that info on a UK art collecting group on Yahoo!, and a friend of Leach asked him about it and he said that he has no current plans to do Miracleman. So I don't know if the Publisher of Atomika was making things up, or if Leach was just keeping things close to the vest until all of the issues were resolved.